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One of the possible results of a [[Time Crash]]. When it's people doing it, not some kind of natural force, it's [[Time Police]]. Compare to the [[Necro Non Sequitur]], a gratuitous and Rube Goldberg-y way for time to deal with interlopers. Not to be confused with the [[Butterfly of Doom]], in which the insect punishing the time traveler for interfering with the natural progression of events does so by dying, when it's not just a metaphor to begin with.
 
Not related to the insectoid ''[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D]]'' construct of the same name; they, and any other [[I Thought It Meant|roaches made of clockwork]], are a kind of [[Clockwork Creature]]. Also not to be confused with the disturbing internet meme, [http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Clock_spider Clock Spider], which is [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]].
 
Similar are creatures out for those who mess with space. You may look for examples in [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place]]. Has absolutely nothing to do with the Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities.
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** The Clockroach itself does not embody this trope,
* In ''[[Continuum]]'', the players themselves are [[Time Police]]. However, if the players fail, Clock Roaches known as Inheritors show up to clean things up, and the game makes it clear that you do ''not'' want to get in their way.
* ''[[Mage: The Ascension (Tabletop Game)|Mage: The Ascension]]'': The Wrinkle is the Paradox Spirit that shows up to deal with people who have pushed their luck one too many times in tampering with how things should be, especially temporally. Wrinkle does this by rewriting time so that the offender was never born. They always gives offenders a chance to undo whatever it was they did first. This is most likely due to the fact that he is ''[[Big Bad|the]]'' most powerful Paradox spirit in Mage by an order of magnitude. For example, all the mage has to do is apologize for what they did and agree that they shouldn't have done it, and Wrinkle does the actual work of rewinding events to the point where the offending [[Reality Warper]] can try something else.
* ''[[Exalted (Tabletop Game)|Exalted]]'' has the pattern spiders, the gods that maintain the Loom of Fate, and are basically responsible for the laws of physics. Bend the aforementioned laws too much, and you'll incur their displeasure in the form of a Pattern Bite, which is basically a spider bite, except that the spider is a giant mechanical god-spider responsible for maintaining natural law, and what it bites is not you, but your thread in the Loom of Fate, causing all kinds of unpleasant effects. [[Dissimile|So not much like a spider bite at all, really.]]
 
== Video Games ==
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* ''[[Prince of Persia]]: Warrior Within'' has the Dahaka, a guardian of time that hunts the Prince in order to restore time to its original flow. It's implied that whenever someone changes the past, a Dahaka shows up to deal with it -- the first one was ''created'' when the Prince tempered with time, and a second comes up to deal with his second attempt to fix his own mistake in the game.<br /><br /> {{spoiler|If you get the [[Golden Ending]], you kill the Dahaka, and the Empress of Time sails away with you. Thus the Sands of Time are not created in the past. (They get created when the Empress is killed.)}}
* In [[Super Robot Wars]], Ingram Pliskin and his {{spoiler|clone}} Cobray are secretly these. According to Ingram in an exposition, every universe is given only one (hence why Cobray's powers didn't manifest until after {{spoiler|Ingram was dead}}), and that their job is to protect causality by ''deleting from existence any force that threatens it''.
* ''[[Chrono Trigger (Video Game)|Chrono Trigger]]'':
** In an odd sort of way, the heroes could be considered Clock Roaches, because the "Entity" pulls Crono out of time to save itself against Lavos. [[Chrono Cross (Video Game)|The sequel]] also had Chronopolis and Dinopolis pulled back through time by Lavos and the Entity respectively.
** As a result of {{spoiler|Magus'}} actions, {{spoiler|Lavos absorbs Schala and becomes the Time Devourer, the ultimate Clock Roach, who, rather than going after Crono and his friends, unmakes all existence.}} That is the entire plot of ''[[Chrono Cross (Video Game)|Chrono Cross]]''. You can stop it, but not by simply defeating the Time Devourer; it'll just reproduce from another reality and the new one will replace the old one. {{spoiler|You have to play a song that unites all reality, leaving the Time Devourer no copies of itself to regenerate from.}}
* In ''[[Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army]]'', Rasputin (yes, that one) was originally employed by some kind of entity as part of an attempt to erase the time line Raidou lives in (for example, the year is Taisho 20, but the [[Real Life]] Taisho era only lasted 15 years).
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]''
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** The Infinite Dragonflight that attempts to change the timeline is universally villainous - only two out of four of their attempts even try to have a weak [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act]] excuse (which is explained to make the current situation worse anyway), the rest being outright villainy.
** Their goals have been muddied even further with confirmation in ''Wrath'' and ''Cataclysm'' that the Infinites are a corrupted future version of the Bronzes. While still [[Clock Roaches|Clock Dragons]], they're useing their ability to modify time instead, hence the greater danger they pose than most people tampering with time.
* In the ''[[Final Fantasy XI (Video Game)|Final Fantasy XI]]'' expansion "Wings of the Goddess", The avatar Atomos is a mindless being that eats 'dispensable' time, including the memories anybody might have of alternative timelines that have become endangered due to the intervention of time travelers. All of this ends up dumped in the Walk of Echoes, a graveyard for everything that might have been.
* ''[[TimeshiftTimeShift]]'': The [[AFGNCAAP|protagonist]] fits this role, as there is [[Flash Back|apparently]] a danger of the [[Alternate Timeline]] "colliding" with our own if the [[Big Bad]] isn't stopped. What exactly this [[Divide Byby Zero|would mean]] is not explored, suffice it to say [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|that would be bad]].
* ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon|Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky]]'': {{spoiler|(fake)}} [[Big Bad]] Primal Dialga and to a much lesser extent, {{spoiler|Dusknoir}}, [[The Dragon|his Dragon.]] The two villains actually think that the hero/ine, his/her partner, and Grovyle are responsible for destroying time, so the two actually want all three of them destroyed.
* ''[[Blinx the Time Sweeper]]'': All the monsters except the main antagonists are a result of a colossal [[Time Crash|time crash]], the plot revolves around eradicating them.
 
== Webcomics ==
* Timeclones and altered timelines are not welcome in [[Homestuck (Webcomic)|Homestuck]]. Any given Hero has an alpha timeline; mostly this only matters to the Hero whose purview is Time. Either way, any deviation from the alpha timeline, or extraneous instance of a given hero, caused by time travel shenanigans is doomed to die eventually, in some unfortunate and contrived manner if the universe can't scrounge up a good one.
 
 
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